Shane Dillon was a two-sport star at Christian High of El Cajon, good enough as a quarterback to get a four-year ride to a Pac-12 school, good enough in basketball to receive Division I interest as well.

He’s a sophomore now. He’s living at home and attending Cuyamaca College.

“I know what people are going to think,” Dillon was saying on the phone earlier this week. “On the outside, to people it might look like a stupid decision. To me, it’s not. I want to do what I love doing and pursue my passion. I didn’t want to do something I was growing to hate.”

It’s been a crazy six months for Dillon, from a disappointing spring at Colorado in football to walking away from a scholarship to an ill-fated oral commitment to USD in basketball to a pay-your-own-way JC in a league with tiny gyms and van trips and no guarantees of returning to the big time.

But the story begins well before that, in high school, when dozens of Div. I programs were constantly calling for football and only a handful were in basketball.

“Shane should have picked basketball from the beginning,” Shani Dillon, his mother, says. “Patrick (Shane’s father) and I, we should have encouraged him to wait it out for basketball. He didn’t receive as much interest at first, and they were coming at him full force in football.”

Dillon sat out his freshman season at Colorado while recovering from shoulder surgery. Then the coaching staff that recruited him was fired after going 1-11. Then, as the heir apparent to the starting job, he got beat out in the spring by two quarterbacks with less pedigree.

He also found himself going to the campus rec center religiously after football practice, to play basketball.

“I started growing to hate football,” Dillon says.

He says one option was to forfeit his football scholarship and play basketball for Coach Tad Boyle at Colorado, but out-of-state tuition and home sickness deterred him. The next option was to gain his scholarship release from CU and start talking to prospective basketball suitors.

One of his first calls was to Bill Grier at USD, which had recruited him briefly in high school before he committed to Colorado.

On the afternoon of July 24, Dillon posted this on twitter: Will officially be a USD Torero next season playin’ basketball! So excited for what is to come and to be able to play what I love.

Twelve hours later, CBS Sports posted a lengthy story about the 6-foot-6 quarterback at Colorado turned small forward at USD. It quickly spread on the web and through the Denver papers.

Two days later, on an online Q and A, Dillon was asked about playing time at USD and replied: “Should get a lot based on what the coaches are tellin’ me! Hopefully get a chance to start or come off the bench right away.”

Grier is in a tough spot, since NCAA rules preclude him from discussing a “recruitable athlete” and Dillon remains one. He can’t say if he indeed extended an offer to Dillon or if Dillon was even accepted into school.